Time to reflect on Holocaust Memorial Day

The origins of Nazi genocide will be explored at our University's annual Holocaust Memorial Day lecture at 6:00pm on Tuesday 24 January 2017.

Professor Dirk Moses from the University of Sydney will deliver the lecture titled ‘The Colonial origins of Nazi Genocide’, and will discuss the first genocide of the 20th century, carried out by Imperial Germany against the Herero and Nama peoples in modern-day Namibia 110 years ago (1904/07).

The lecture, in conjunction with our Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, will explore the links between colonialism and genocide, asking how colonial powers, such as Imperial Germany and Great Britain, looked upon their colonial atrocities and asking if there are any links between European colonial genocides and the Holocaust.

The theme Holocaust Memorial Day 2017, on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, is ‘how can life go on?’

Professor Moses will look at the links between colonialism and the Holocaust from a global point of view. An important theme he will touch upon is the genocide in in Namibia, where the descendants of the victims still suffer from the consequences and continue to fight for recognition of the atrocity.

Dr Alex Korb, Director of the Stanley Burton Centre said: “This year’s Holocaust Memorial motto, How life can go on?, is a question that is being asked every day, by the survivors of the Holocaust of the first, second and third generation who live among us here in Leicester, as well as by those who survived other, contemporary genocides.

“But also the genocides that have been committed in a seemingly distant past still haunt the descendants of the survivors today.

“Imperial Germany committed the first genocide of the 20th Century against the Herero and Nama peoples in today's Namibia. It was this month that Herero and Nama sued Germany over the forgotten genocide against their ancestors in a New York court. This clearly demonstrates that life goes on, but that genocide is never forgotten.”

Professor Moses's lecture is the keynote for a workshop on 'Forced labour, confinement & repression: European, Imperial & Post-Colonial Perspectives', co-organised by the The Carceral Archipelago Project & The Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.

The lecture, hosted by the Stanley Burton Centre, will take place in the Fraser Noble Hall on Tuesday 24 January and forms part of a series of events at the University of Leicester to mark Holocaust Memorial Day which are free and open to the public.

General information about Holocaust Memorial Day – which is nationally commemorated on 27 January each year – is available here.